


Better Than Dreaming

by kayforpay



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Speed Force, Wally West is alive again, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:00:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25984015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayforpay/pseuds/kayforpay
Summary: When Artemis lost Wally, it was like the end for her. Nothing made sense anymore. She was alone. All the changes she made to herself, all the times she avoided her old friends, it made sense to her.When he came back, she didn't know what to do, either.
Relationships: Artemis Crock/Wally West
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	Better Than Dreaming

It happened during patrol. Artemis was clinging to the shadows of a building, waiting to see if anything would happen with a drunken dispute between two barely of age college kids, and the sky burst open. Lightning rained down around her, and while civilians were ushered inside, she made her way up higher for a vantage point. The clouds over the city were barely brushed with gray, and she was sure the forecast hadn’t mentioned anything about supernaturally colored lightning, or even rain. She climbed a little faster, hoping in her heart that she wouldn’t be disappointed by what she was imagining again.

She stood on a terrace a few stories up, staring at the sky, and wondered if Aqualad had been right; maybe she was acting like she was invincible, or hoping to join Wally wherever he ended up. It wasn’t like Artemis had never done anything dangerous; she was taught by Oliver Queen, after all, it was part of the job description! But something about this, about the bright flashes of yellow and the speed that the lightning and thunder were rolling in at, felt different. Maybe better. A bolt shot down towards her, bright yellow, almost tangible in how she saw it arcing in the air. For a split second, she felt the electricity on her skin, she tasted copper and smelled ozone, and she thought she was going to be struck. Instead, a body tumbled out of the bolt, and directly at her.

She wasn't fast enough to catch him at first, and had to scramble towards the edge of her perch and drag him up half by then back of his neck, but she managed to keep him from hitting the ground. It took Artemis a few seconds of breathing to realize the lightning storm had almost completely waned, and she stared at the sky in shock. In her arms, the person who fell from the sky still had tiny bolts flickering between his fingertips and his legs, zapping her each time they came near, though it didn’t really hurt as much as she had assumed it would when she used to watch him run through it, when they were still kids.

His eyes fluttered almost too fast for her to see, he mumbled incoherently, and he was covered in bruises and scrapes where his costume had been ripped off. His hair was singed, and a little too long, his lips were dry and cracked, his nails were dirty, but she could tell it was him through anything. She had only been looking for him everywhere she went for the past two years, hoping that he had pulled the same trick as her and was just waiting to come home to her, both of them new. Maybe where she was Tigress, he was going to be The Bolt, or just The Flash. She wasn’t sure what she hoped, but this was better than all her wildest notions, because he was really, finally there, in her arms.

Wally West. Alive, somehow. The shock almost made her fall off the building. She couldn’t breathe for what felt like hours, watching him twitch and slur incoherent words, his feet thudding against the cement and his barely-open eyes unfocused, but still his. She let herself imagine that they focused on her, for only a moment at a time, before finally remembering her comms.

Between sharp sobs, she begged for backup, someone to get them, and to help him, and although their team was as shocked as her, no one questioned it. Everyone came, and while she struggled to pull herself together, to keep her appearances as a majestic huntress high above her emotions now, they each had a moment of dumbfounded awe, seeing their friend actually there again. No one spoke, and it seemed strangely silent on the way back to their base, like they were all scared to break the spell and send Wally right back to the afterlife with a single word.

At the base, they ran every test they could imagine on him, and he was... fine. Exhausted, dehydrated, hungry, but healthy otherwise, with no longstanding injuries compared to the last time anyone had seen him. She ushered everyone out to strip him from his suit, and got him dressed in pajamas, taking that excuse to inspect him; he wasn’t severely hurt. Even though he had lost some weight since the last time she’d seen him, his body was still healing at an accelerated rate, and all the scratches she had seen before were mostly gone. They hooked fluids and nutrition to his IV, and moved him to a quieter room.

Although he seemed to rouse on the way to his recovery room, as soon as they had stopped moving him he was asleep again, though much more peacefully than before. She stuck close to his side, not willing to be away from him for more than a moment in case he was gone again, and blissfully, the villains of the world decided to take a couple days off. She mumbled updates on the team to him, on her life. How she had become Tigress, and how she had worked with Aqualad for a while, and his strange quirks, imagining he might wake up laughing. She told Wally how she wanted him to come home to her, and about the way she'd been begging for him to come home, how he must have heard her. He must have known how desperately Artemis needed him to come home, because here he was.

After three days, he blinked his eyes open, but it seemed like a trick of the light, it happened so fast. Then, he spoke. His voice was cracked and dry, and still seemed half-asleep. "Have you been here the whole time?" Artemis was so shocked, she couldn’t say anything, but she nodded, blinking quickly to shed the tears pooling in her eyes. “Sorry it took me so long.”

Artemis shook her head, and Wally lifted an arm to pull her towards him. She hugged his chest, sobbing sharply against his shirt, and he mumbled soothingly to her. It felt like it took hours for her to be able to speak again, and not just mumble  _ Wally, Wally  _ over and over, to not just cling to him and be terrified that he’d be gone the second she stopped holding him. His shirt was wet when she finally managed to look him in the eyes again, and he just cupped her cheek and looked at her like she was the only person in the world to him.

Wally’s eyes were red, and wet, but he didn’t cry until she reiterated everything she’d told him while he was sleeping. How it had been two years, how she had reacted. “The Speed Force, where I was, was endless. It felt like I had been there for decades. It didn’t want me to leave, either, and every moment was… I had to keep reliving the worst moments of my life, over and over. It said I was atoning for what happened here.” He said, his voice tight and his eyes distant, clouded by memories of the lost years he lived through. She nodded slowly, encouragingly, so he could continue. “I kept seeing you. I couldn’t tell if they were memories or not, but sometimes, you would answer when I called for you, and act like you didn’t know who I was. The Speed Force wanted to make me hurt as much as possible.”

She took a breath, and held his face between her hands. “I’m so sorry, Wally. I’m so sorry that any of this happened to you. I love you.” It was the first time she had said it out loud in two years, since he was gone. Somehow, she had thought it would count as her accepting he was gone. “I love you so much. I’ve thought about you, about this, every single day since you were gone. I know it doesn’t change what happened, but I never forgot you. I never could.” While she spoke, Wally sobbed softly, nodding into her hands, and she pulled his head to her shoulder to hold him, both of them squished together on his hospital bed.

They squirmed as much as they could to get comfortable, but didn’t get far. Wally told her some of the things he’d seen in the Speed Force, the horrors that even now seemed to be fading from his mind like they’d never happened, leaving only the sense of terror behind. She told him about how she had struggled to move forward, how she refused to move on, not because she thought he would expect her not to but because she couldn’t let their relationship become just a memory for her, not when she couldn’t sleep without his pillow on her bed, or leave the house without kissing his picture.

He teased her about it, but he was relieved, visibly, that she still cared for him. Wally didn’t have to say it, but he told Artemis that he had never stopped thinking about her, worrying about her. He said he never wanted to leave, and she knew that, but somehow hearing him tell her that he didn’t  _ want  _ to leave, that he never  _ wanted  _ to leave her alone, to stay gone, to die… It was more reassuring than she could explain, not that he asked any questions about it either.

It was cramped, her arm fell asleep almost immediately, but when he dozed off again holding her around the waist, she felt more at peace than she had in the two years since he was gone, at any time. Even if she had managed to move on, it would have felt hollow, like she was abandoning him when he needed her the most. She had always just told herself she needed to be strong for the two of them, because that’s what Wally would have done, too. She didn’t tell him that, because it would only have weighed on his conscience if he thought he had “held her back” somehow. Even though it was so obvious to her that he never could, that being there for him and remembering him was what made her work even harder to be even better, he might feel guilty that she was waiting for him still.

She felt drained, physically and emotionally, and fell quickly asleep beside him, listening to the quiet sounds of his breath. When she woke up, she wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but Wally was walking back into the room from the restroom, and smiling.

“Hey. I was just gonna order something to eat, are you hungry?” He asked, holding a menu for takeout. “I’m starving. You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve missed crappy pizza since I left. Like, I had a dream about it before I got up right now. You were there, we were having an eating contest, which was weird.” 

She sat up and scrubbed at her eyes, nodding along while he continued explaining his food-based dream. “I could eat. I’m just glad you feel okay to move around. When you first… Got here, you looked like you might need a lot of recovery. And I almost dropped you off a building, too.” She mumbled the last part, scratching her hair and looking at the bed beside her instead of Wally’s shocked face.

“What? You almost dropped me? I came right at you  _ because _ you have the best reflexes of anyone on the team! Besides me, but not counting speedsters. But you weren’t that high up, either, I’ve probably fallen off of buildings higher than that.” He laughed, and she had to look away from him again, because his laugh sounded so wonderful in her ears she thought she might start crying again right then. He took that chance to call his favorite pizza parlor and order an inordinate amount of food, and joked about missing their food when he was on a ‘business trip’ for a long time. When he got off the phone, he sat back down beside her. “It’s really good to be home.”

Artemis nodded, and took Wally’s hand. “It’s so strange. You’re really here, and I’m awake. I’m used to having to shake myself out of this every morning, but you’re still here.” She said, and paused. Better to get it out, she supposed. “Why are you so okay with having been killed, Wally? Just because you came back, it doesn’t mean that it’s funny now, or that it’s a joke. You were gone for two years. You lost two years.” It felt almost mean to even let herself be upset with him, but she couldn’t stop it. He was just  _ joking,  _ like it hadn’t even happened! Like he hadn’t even left her behind!

“Hey, Artemis, wait.” He squeezed her hand, and looked her in the eyes. Even through the fog of tears, she could see the sincerity on his face, his clear, open expression. “I don’t think it’s funny. I don’t think it’s just okay. But I have to joke and laugh, because I have to keep moving forward. I know this isn’t the best way to cope with what happened, but I have to do it my way until I can get to where I can really, really talk about it with you.” He cleared his throat a little, and smiled, but it seemed sad. “I saw things I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to share with you, Artemis. But that isn’t because I don’t think it’s worth talking about, it’s just, it’s really hard. It’s hard for me to talk about seriously. It’s hard for me to think about without feeling like I’m getting trapped again. So I have to joke about it.”

She knew she was being selfish, but she couldn’t stop herself from speaking again, her voice tight and wet. “You left me alone, Wally. You left without me.”

Wally wrapped his arms around her, pulling her to his chest, and pushed his cheek into her hair. “Artemis. I never wanted to go anywhere without you. I never wanted to leave you. I love you.” She choked back a sob, but he continued. “But if I had to choose between going back there alone and having you suffer even a fraction of what I did, I would leave in a heartbeat. Not because I want to be anywhere away from you, but because I will do anything I can to protect you. Even though you don’t need protecting, right?” He squeezed her around the shoulders again, and she nodded into his chest, crying softly.

“I missed you. I missed you every day. I just wish I could have all the time we missed back, Wally. I wish we could go back and have everything we were supposed to have. I wish we could actually promise not to leave each other again, but we have so much else to worry about.” She felt thirsty, like she had cried out all the water in her system, but she refused to move away from him yet. They still had time before they would need to do anything else, and she needed every second of it. “I would have married you.”

Besides rubbing his knuckles on her spine, he didn’t respond for a long time, his head still bent down to lean on her hair and his breathing calm. She didn’t need him to respond, not yet. Even though they had still missed two years, this felt better. Actually openly saying all the selfish things she had thought about, and him telling her what she already knew to be true. Of course he had to work on himself, he had to get better, he had to joke and make light. It was Wally. She knew, but she still wished he didn’t have to, as selfish as it was. Still, if she had wanted a brooding hero, she never would have liked Kid Flash to begin with.

After a little while of quiet, where they both seemed to be contemplating things, or at least enjoying the quiet-- she couldn’t tell, but she wasn’t about to break the silence to ask him what he was thinking-- their pizza came. Wally sped out to get it and pay for it, and then sped back into the room with his stack slightly diminished.

“Thought I should share with the rest of the team, y’know? It feels rude not to at least offer when you’re eating something. Especially something like this delicious fake-cheese on only-one-kind-of-crust-available pizza.” He set the stack down, cracked a box open, and flicked the little table from the center into the trash can. She picked up a slice, and he continued. “Some things never change. Thank goodness for that, though, I don’t know if I could handle a paradigm shift like my favorite pizza place getting better.”

She chuckled, and swallowed her bite of food a little quickly. “You know, the owner is threatening to start using real cheese. He said he doesn’t get enough ‘young, rich idiots’ in, so, he’s looking at options.” As she spoke, Wally’s face was a mask of pure shock, his eyes wide, and she couldn’t help but laugh at him again. “Most people would be happy to eat real food products, Wally!”

He shook his head. “I just can’t imagine him ever deciding to change anything.” He scarfed down a few slices while she worked on her first, and then looked at her critically and wiped his hands on the blanket. “Hey, Artemis. Would you still do it?”

“Do what?"

He slid to the floor fluidly, knelt in front of her, and lifted a candy ring from behind himself. “Marry me. I know I was gone, and I know this isn’t how you wanted to be asked, and I’ll definitely get a real ring like, as soon as I can, but I swear I’m being serious. I can’t believe I’m the fastest man alive and I waited so long to ask you. Please marry me, Artemis Crock.” His face was open, as ever, his eyes full of so much love she wasn’t sure she could even handle it, and it took her what felt like hours to find her voice.

“Yes. Yes, Wally.” She said, dropping her half-eaten pizza back in the box, and dove off the bed and into his arms. 

Between flurries of kissing him and trying not to cry, she made him put the candy ring on her finger, and they laughed about it while they finished eating. Later that night, the rest of their team made rounds to visit them, and they shared the news, including the ring-pop on her finger, and invited everyone they could think of being important.

Even though Artemis was worried that delaying for even a day would encourage something to happen, just to shatter the dreamlike happiness of Wally being her fiance, he convinced her to make at least some bigger plans. Oliver demanded to fund the whole thing, but promised he probably wouldn’t show up, siting that he didn’t like parties, and it went from something in the backyard to renting a small chapel, from home-cooked food to catered, and she even picked out a dress.

Wally insisted on not seeing it, and had her pick flowers, and cake, and tablecloths with him, because, as he said, it mattered that she got to have an event for this. He wanted it to be a lot of memories together, not just one memory of getting married by signing some papers in a courthouse. Artemis told him that she was fine with that, because they had the rest of their lives to make memories, but he reminded her that he wanted to keep making them before that, too, to try and make up for missing two years.

By the end of planning, she knew way too much about table runners, and had realized a long-sleeping love for peonies and hydrangeas. It felt silly, running back from rescues to debate the pros and cons of seating plans, but it was also deeply soothing. It felt normal, not rushed and painful just in it’s attempt to avoid more pain later, and she kind of loved it. One week turned into one month, and then two, and then five.

It was a shorter engagement than a lot, but a lot longer than she planned on waiting, and when the day finally came for her to walk down the aisle, it was like she was in a waking dream. The music was perfect. Her friends were all there, wearing their nice clothes, in the pews and lining either side of the altar, and she felt beautiful. Beyond that, she saw Wally, standing tall, healthy, in a suit she helped him pick, with the brightest smile she had ever seen on his face, watching her every move like she was the most amazing person he could imagine seeing. It was perfect.

She stepped in time to the music, which was more traditional than she ever thought she would be interested in, and clutched her bouquet to her chest, breathing deeply to keep from tearing up and ruining her makeup. They had even had a rehearsal, just for this. Oliver had changed his mind, and was sitting at the front. As she got closer, she saw tears in his eyes, and made a mental note to tease him about it later, even if right then it only made her struggle harder not to cry herself. It was three small stairs up to the altar, and she handed the flowers off to hold Wally’s hands.

“You look amazing.” He said, softly, and she laughed. “Really, I can’t stop staring.”

She squeezed his hands, and stopped herself short from kissing him when the officiant gently reminded her of the usual order of things. “Sorry. You look great, Wally. I love that suit on you.” She whispered, because the officiant had started doing the speech.

Although Wally had threatened to write some sappy vows, when it finally came to his part, he only made sure to meet her eyes, and spoke calmly. “You’re the love of my life. I can’t believe I get this chance with you, and I’m gonna make the most of it.”

He slipped the ring on her finger. She sniffled, and said her own vows, which felt much less now that he had spoken. “I love you, Wally West. You’re the most important person I have. I want to grow old with you. I’m so happy to marry you.” She put the ring on him, and thankfully took a tissue from a box that was offered, dabbing carefully at her eyes.

They did the normal vows, the I do’s, and before the officiant could even finish saying, “You may now kiss the bride,” Wally, had pulled her off her feet in a low dip, kissing her like he couldn’t breathe without it, and almost making both of them fall to the floor. While their partygoers laughed, she kissed him again, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, and cried in earnest. He teased her, but only softly, leaning his forehead on hers and swaying them both softly as the music behind them played and the pews were cleared for the tables and chairs to be brought in.

“We did it. I’ve been thinking about this day for the last five months, Artemis.” He said, finally leaning back to wipe her tear-tracked face with a few fresh tissues. “I could barely wait for it to happen.”

She laughed, pushing at his chest. “You were the one who made it take so long to plan! You and Oliver, anyway.” She finished cleaning her face, and he took her to sit down at one of the tables that had been set up already. 

“I know, but I wanted it to be the best it could be. You deserve at least that much. Even if it took a little longer than I might have thought it would, you looked so happy, Artemis. That’s worth anything to me.” He slipped his hand into hers, and their rings tapped. It was going to be a new feeling, having the ring on her hand, but she didn’t think she would ever want to take it off.

**Author's Note:**

> hey! what a fun and emotional commission. hmu on twitter @kayforpay if you want a commission (and for a tip link if you're really cool)


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